>>2451310Oh, and Dungeon Hack. It's not a great game, but it was the first roguelike game I ever played, before I had ever heard of Rogue or its ilk, and coming from EoB and other first person dungeon crawlers it was a lot of fun.

>>2451561I like the philosophy behind Sil but I really wish it was more lore-heavy. Combat is quite good but it feel like I'm playing Moria with Tolkien monsters, still fighting lots of worm masses and stuff at low levels, and very little flavor to the dungeon itself at all.

It might seem silly to care about flavor in your roguelikes when they're so stripped down compared to other games, but I do.

>>2451280Back when ToME was "Tales of Middle-Earth" and not "Tales of Maj'Eyal," playing with the Theme module was my favorite. I don't think it was the best designed, but it was really cool having an overworld map that corresponded closely to the Lord of the Rings one, with lots of dungeons from the books available, and encountering tons of Tolkien-themed uniques and artifacts.

Most of the dungeons have some quirk, like the Paths of the Dead has creatures occasionally resurrect as zombie or skeleton versions of themselves, aside from having a lot of undead (and especially high-powered undead spellcasters like liches) in general.

I don't understand the popularity of these games compared to text adventures, a much more capable medium for dungeon crawling.Yet, MUDS are the best option for this kind of rpg, and almost nobody bothers with a true singleplayer command-based rpg instead of making their constant Infocom clones.

I've been trying to create a good combat system in Inform to create just this kind of game. I literally can't find a single example online that isn't a mud.

>>2451719I dunno, honestly. I just keep doing the same newbie mistakes, I suppose. I think it's my lack of planning, or maybe I should just grind out one character (GE Wizard or Dwarf Priest) until I finally get it right.

I just seem to overextend and die, and if I don't, I'll bugger up something like getting too much St drain in the Graveyard, not training enough with herbs, or something else altogether.

I spoilered myself silly and I know tricks like going spear+shield for max DV gains + orcish spears being the best basic early game weapon and picking Treasure Hunter, but to no avail, really. I'm just bad at those. The closest I can go with tough dungeon crawlers is something like Wizardry, I suppose.

Maybe someday I'll ascend in Nethack. I doubt it. I don't have the patience, I just like fooling around. There still isn't any modern game that gives me the feeling of freedom that a good roguelike does.

>>2451654"Dungeon crawling" in text adventures, even ones actually set in underground areas, barely has anything to do with the experience of roguelikes. Adventure games are all about exploration and puzzles to reach the next area, roguelikes are all about tactical combat with the exploration more a matter of clearing out the level, seeing what you find, or managing resources like food to determine how much time you can spend.

It's especially silly to make the comparison to roguelikes, which have almost no puzzles at all, compared to Dungeon Master or other similar dungeon crawling games. Even if you're just trying to stir the pot, that's a really weird claim to make. I mean, I hope you wouldn't say that text adventures are better suited for tactical turn-based combat on a grid, too.

>>2451703Roguelikes rarely have actual mazes unless it's a special maze dungeon level/area. It's rarely hard to figure out where you can go and how to get there. And in fact, most text adventures past the Zork era don't have mazes either.

>>2451654SanctuaryRPG sounds like what you're asking for. Started as a free game on Reddit or something before being sold on steam and gog.It's pretty cool but it is sometimes too silly for its own good.

>>2451787>Stuff like the ants in Puppy Cave just aren't something hackable through even on Berserk mode.

I kite them to the stairs and take them one at a time on the above floor. It helps to pick a speed trait like long stride to help you outrun them.

For choices of race, delfs are mega stronk. They seem frail, but they have alertness (the best defensive skill by far) and find weakness, which at 100 gives them a 25% crit rate. Pair it with a class like barb or beastfighter, and you're set. Aiming for the Raven starsign gives you the runed trident at lvl 16, meaning the hardest enemies in the game are now nothing.

DCSS can be fun, but it has some stuff that never ceases to annoy the shit out of me and kill all the fun. I've long since lost count of all the characters I get up to level 8-16, get blasted into the Abyss cause some fucker had a weapon of Random Effects or similar, and then die trying to find an exit. In all the games I've played, all the characters I've had, not one has EVER found the fucking exit from the Abyss. These days I just quit the moment I get thrown there since I know where it's going to go. Removing the Abyss altogether would make it a 10/10 game, but I doubt they will ever do that. Don't even get me started on the low-level uniques, that shit is just a kick in the dick for new players.

DoomRL can be decent fun, but you might as well reset once you reach Demios if the RNG gods haven't been kind. I know RNG is a big part of these games and all, but I still think it's bullshit to get that deep with a character and still have no armor, no boots, no rocket launcher, and no plasma rifle.

>>2452176Take notes man. That's the only way I could beat nethack, and it only took a little over two years to ascend. Really my break came from figuring out how to do one thing very well. In time I'll try to beat nethack again not abusing my little secret. I'd post my spoiler, but got the formatting wrong last time, so this is just a test

It took me about three to four years to ascend the first time, and I was playing a monk so wanted a bunch of conducts like weaponless / vegetarian / polyless / artifact-wishless / etc. before ascending.That was just about ten years ago so I don't remember all the particular details.The most I can advise is to look through the spoilers, and often, and keep playing regularly. I prefer Sokoban first, some people prefer mines first, rely on pets heavily until you complete both, don't advance dlvls or exp levels too quickly, conserve food, don't do stupid shit like quaff from fountains, kick sinks or any of that, don't bother with a protection racket (rely on pet to steal items from shops, sell them back, descend to Minetown on Xp 1 and gain a huge amount of -AC by donating) until you've ascended at least once because they're unbelievably hard to pull off. Also don't kill Izchak.

Finally pulled off an ultra. Hardest part was getting that wish in the beginning. Managed to do it by stacking up my luck with fate smiles, lucky and the Ankh, then drinking from a pool with the same color as my character's eyes. The rest of the game was smooth.

I thought that would kill the ADOM urges, but I've been tempted to return and try out a weaponsmith, wizard or archer for the crazy stacks of arrows.

>>2455845They're both roguelites, really. Anything with only graphical modes is. Having the option to play with ASCII graphics is one of the defining elements of a roguelike. I'm not saying that having no graphics makes a game better, what a daft thing that would be to say, but we shouldn't go redefining genres.

>>2451313Hmm, I think you can, but it's just my opinion. The design for the game was basically a few maintainers throwing together tons of variants... I think the game could have benefited from culling features.

I've played and loved DoomRL. Are the any roguelikes more like it, but not QUITE as balls crushingly hard?Ranged combat would be nice, and i'm fine with any setting, doesn't have to be sci-fi like DoomRL.

>>2451732It's so sad to me only one of you has said Shiren. It really is one of the best minimalist roguelikes ever made and an absolutely brilliant game. The SNES version is the toughest, but the DS remake is almost as good and has a pretty great translation.

Just stay away from later Shiren titles. Oddly enough, Chunsoft knocked it out of the park originally and then somehow forgot what made it so great and then floundered for years on Dragon Quest and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games that were all super easy and totally miss what makes the genre fun.

Fortunately Etrian Mystery Dungeon is back in good form, but that's not retro.

>>2460036Shiren is boring to me, having played Nethack. There's just very little to do in the game and it hardly encourages creativity on the part of the player. Even something as simple as Pixel Dungeon is more complex than Shiren.

>>2460074That's why I described it as minimalist. It's quite a bit different from more robust roguelikes like NetHack. It's a bit more like a blend of a JRPG and a roguelike. I can understand it not appealing to everyone, but I love it.

I should note though, I tend to prefer the more stripped down ones. Rogue was my favorite game as a kid and it's pretty simple in a lot of ways. My other favorite which isn't retro, but whatever is called POWDER. Originally made for the GBA, it's closer to Rogue than NetHack. Like Shiren, the difficulty comes from some of the limitations you have.